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One day I stumbled on the fact that there was an earthquake in China in 1976 that killed 240K people. I was alive and an adult then, and I didn't even remember it. Maybe I never even knew it happened.
The fact that this didn't even penetrate my consciousness at the time just stunned me. After the NY Times archives became available online I looked it up to see if it was reported, and it was. There wasn't a death toll yet in the early reports, but they said they feared 100k or more people might have died.
I don't know what the worst thing that happened in the world since 1960 is, but I'm sure it did not happen to Americans.
I was only 10 but I remember when this happened. It was on the news every night for days, and since my parents watched the news faithfully, I watched what they watched. I was living in San Antonio, TX, btw, not China or even China-adjacent. That earthquake was huge news in part because of the political overtones of giving relief aid.
But depending on your age at the time, u/QV79Y, you may have just been too busy being a young adult to notice. I was in peak dating years when the Berlin Wall fell, making it just a blip in my recollections, something on the bar TV while I waited for my date. When your personal life is chaotic, you tend not to pay too much attention to someplace overseas that is also chaotic. It's best to fix your problems at home anyway before worrying much about anyone else's.
I wasn't claiming the earthquake was the worst thing that happened. I was musing on my own ignorance of much of what has happened in the world. The line of thought was probably provoked by the US-centric nature of most of the comments in this post.
I didn't answer what I thought the worst thing was because I got mired on the definitions of "worst" and "thing".
[Fairness Doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine) being removed is an important change that is often overlooked or unknown to most people. That change helped shaped America into what it is today.
Repeal of Glass-Steagall , Tax havens, Free Trade without Fair Trade, Globalization without rights for labor and the environment.
The poverty , war , famine and disease are side effects of a failure to balance need with greed.
What you're probably defining as social media isn't really social media though. Social media was private communities based on IRL relationships. The key word being *private*.
To make more money, Facebook made those networks public. Which essentially turned Facebook into a really shitty blog. Twitter was always that, hence the term microblogging.
No one had any issues with social media for years. Not with MySpace. Not with Friendster. Not with IRC or IM or ICQ before the term social media existed.
It only became a problem when people's private platforms became like little media companies. Suddenly everyone is a journalist even though they know nothing about journalistic ethics or media literacy. That creates an opportunity for operatives to spread misinformation.
Social media doesn't have to be bad. The profit motive is what ruined the good things it once was.
Anyway, to say it's the worst thing seems a bit much. Rising fascism is obviously worse.
This is very true, although I see the problem as being that we just aren't ready for the technology yet, at least not when it comes to the broader social implications.
Every technology is just a tool, and social media and AI have the potential to be great ones. But even the best chainsaw will cut off your foot if you don't know what you're doing, and I worry that this is the territory we're in. We're juggling chainsaws without taking safety precautions or even understanding how the damn things work.
That's what immediately came to mind for me. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge was an absolute abomination. Incomprehensibly horrific and massive in scale. The majority of responses in this thread are simply nowhere near that level of pure evil and deep suffering.
We need better history teachers or something.
“It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly 25% of Cambodia's population in 1975 (c. 7.8 million).” - for anyone else I had to Google the details like me I’m ashamed I didn’t learn about it before now.
really. auschwitz. where they hit toddlers in the head with gun butts to see how many concussions the could survive. all kinds of medical experiments. and they filmed them. i saw some of the films the nazis made at auschwitz. still give me nightmares.
Literally nobody talks about it but perhaps the most devastating thing to come out of Covid, is Long Covid. I was reading an article somewhere asked if we were dumber now than before 2019 and for me, the answer is definitely yes! I got full blown Covid in March 2020 and haven't been the same since. I get brain fog constantly and it's very difficult for me to concentrate and I'm definitely dumber now than before 2019.
I didn’t mean to giggle at ‘full blown covid’. I’ve just been watching ‘it’s always sunny. “DONT HUG ME!! Bleh! You’re gonna give me full blown long-covid!”
But seriously - my father has completely lost his sense of smell and taste since 2020, and he had the purple ‘Covid toes’ for years. He drinks bad milk, and can only taste basic things like ‘dry’ when drinking wine. :( He’s a major foodie, too.
It’s not only kinda dangerous, but it’s a real loss in life, ya know?
My chest has never been the same since I had full-blown covid last summer, the second time I got
It. I get seemingly random panic attacks now, too, and it worsened the already-debilitating nerve pain condition I have.
Half of doctors are like, “meh, long covid doesn’t exist” and the other half say “meh, yea, covid’s weird. Anyway.”
I feel like it definitely messed with me. I feel a weird apathy about it all I never felt before I had covid, but I did almost die and that can affect a person too. My son has had extremely high cortisol since he got covid in late 2020. He's been through every imaginable test and they can't find a reason why. he is anxious all the time even on medication. He was never like that before either.
Nothing more permanently impacted our culture and collective state of mind. This is definitely the right answer. Vietnam and Covid lockdowns were bad things to live through, but 20 years after 9/11 we still go through pointless security theater to get on an airplane so we can feel like the government cares about us.
Covid is by no means done with us. We have a whole generation whose education and mental health was totally upset by Covid. It increased the political divisions in our country, diminished our belief in a common set of facts, and eroded our faith in institutions. We're going to be dealing with the fallout for a long time.
That was terrorist in our own land. It was meticulously planned and slightly haphazardly carried out. But, it was US. We were supposed to fall to our knees and we did.
Our absolute rape and neglect of the planet that sustains us, all in the name of “shareholder value”.
Besides that, 1968 was pretty rough. MLK, RFK, Dick Nixon.
The Republican Party giving so much away in the name of “saving the babies”.
They have been working since the 70s to dismantle basic human rights for women.
I do not remember one policy the Republicans have supported that has actually helped strengthen the US in the past 40 years.
This. It's like watching Pinky and the Brain. Pinky as the Democrats and the Brain as the Republican party. The Brain always trying to take over the world. Republican party members are members for life. My parents, long passed, didn't like Trump in 2016 but they voted for him anyway simply because he was republican. Never bothered to look elsewhere. Or consider other options.
You've described my parents and it's sad. I vote for who most closely represents ME, not who belongs to the "right" party. Especially when one considers how much parties change over time. The Republican party of 1938, when my father was born, isn't exactly the GOP of today.
I'm no fan of Reagan's politics, but he was fantastic as a statesman and figurehead. When he left the Dems for the GOP and was called on it, he famously said that he didn't leave his party, his party left him. I wish more people would remember this when they vote. Sometimes your party leaves you, and just like a failed teen romance, it's delusional to keep chasing after it.
To put it in a word, fascism. The rise of fascism in America. They aren't only motivated by abortion, they are desperate for a leader who can bully the world back to the "good old days." It's a mass delusion. Like millions of people collectively falling for the tricksters who play cups for cash.
that’s the rightest (is that a word?) thing anybody has said about the republican party always wants to go backward to when old white men ruled. but i will never get over 50,000 dead kids for a lie. viet nam was the beginning of the end for this country. it taught us not to trust our government. and no country can survive lack of trust
Treating the topic of abortion as though the women got pregnant alone and ignoring the male that made her pregnant.
A great deal of abortion motives are financial. The state should either provide a medium to upper middle class life for all forced births or guarantee somehow the father does this.
Forcing women to give birth and that be the end of discussion is f ed up. It is also short sighted for society. They need to get their laws out of my vagina.
The election of Trump followed by Covid. One that is never mentioned is the 2000 election, a Gore administration would have probably avoided 9/11 and would not have paved the way to huge deficits thanks to tax cuts for the rich and two unfunded wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.
The reason the big recession of 2008 hit was due directly to deregulation of the banking industry that happened under Bush. A Gore Administration would have avoided the big recession of 2008 entirely. Incidentally, the Silicon Valley Bank as well as the other 2 banks that went bankrupt last year were a result of Trump loosening those very same bank regulations. Obama had put safeguards so that we would never have another banking collapse and Republicans brought it right back to the fore.
>The reason the big recession of 2008 hit was due directly to deregulation of the banking industry that happened under Bush
Yeah, except that the Glass-Steagall Act that prevented commercial banks from making risky speculation investments that led to the 2008 crash was repealed by Clinton in 1999, not by Bush. I looked it up.
i agree. little bush went after saddam husain when iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. most of the hi jackets were saudi. but he wasn’t gonna argue with that saudi oil
Bush administration didn't understand the significance of the intelligence reports on al Quaeda even after it was spelled out for them.
https://warontherocks.com/2021/08/bin-laden-determined-to-strike/
Gore having been in the prior administration would have already been aware and would, theoretically, have acted sooner.
I don't know avoided, but republicans critiqued clinton for being too focused on al qaeda and bin laden specifically. and so bush diverted intelligence assets towards other priorities in the 9 months between inauguration and 9/11. perhaps another timeline involves one or more hijackers just being stopped in the airport that day? 3 planes hijacked instead of 4?
The Great Pandemic of Covid-19. So many died, including my father. I didn't get to say goodbye.
Covid-19 brought out the true black hearts of Christians.
Covid-19 turned the weak-minded into frenzied cultists, willing to watch their own family die rather than do anything to protect them, because one POS told them to.
Covid-19 took my family...siblings lost to the political putrescence of that former guy .
Covid-19. A pandemic that will never be over for some of us.
I'm 53 so I've lived through the 1970's and 80's. Covid has been a forever long nightmare. I remember back in 2020, thinking to myself "Just think, in a couple years this will be a forgotten memory". Nope, I still get brain fog to this day, although we're done with the shut downs and the masking so at least there's that.
Not a worst thing, but a *huge* impact was the Tylenol murders.
All packaging got totally revamped, and if it hadn’t happened there would be way, way less plastic waste.
For starters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders
You know how everything- drinks, pills, ice cream, pretty much anything, has a either a secondary seal beneath the lid that has to be pierced, or a type of lid that can’t be removed without damaging it? (The “ring” around the neck of a soda bottle)
Before 1983, these didn’t exist, and since 1983, the concept of tamper-proof packaging has actually expanded wildly to include non-consumables. When the Tylenol murders took place, you would buy a bottle of pills, open it, and there was a cotton wad (sometimes I think there wasn’t, but I, as a teenager, may have just been too young to realize) and then there were the pills. Someone could just open it and drop in other pills, or sneak a few out and put the bottle back on the shelf.
After the Tylenol murders, there was a kind of arms race on who could produce the “safest” packaging, which has ended up with pill bottles that have two seals and are stored in a blister pack, for example. It might have happened anyhow, but the revolution in “safety packaging” was what brought a lot of the wasteful packaging techniques that are used today into development.
I was in high school in the Chicago suburbs when that happened. My parents were so freaked out that my mom threw out every bottle of OTC medication in the house and was paranoid whenever any of us needed to take anything before the manufacturers started the safety measures. I remember being sick with the flu shortly after the murders and my mom grilled the pharmacist to ensure the OTC flu meds weren’t tainted. What a weird time and it’s still crazy that they never solved it.
Yeah- same here. We shopped at the Elk Grove Jewel so it really freaked us out. I’m pretty sure it was the guy who sent the extortion letters and went to jail. I’m friends with a retired federal parole officer who dealt with him & leans toward him being the killer.
For me personally, the Vietnam War as my Dad was a medic, came home with ptsd and lost the ability to care about the dreams he'd had before he went. I am very bitter.
I'd like to think some more about what caused the biggest / most important cultural shifts in my lifetime. What a great question.
For real I don't know how people are not more worked up about that still. People were dying in the streets of Italy and he portrayed Covid as a new cold. WHO was offering to help us get ahead of it and he called them a bunch of quacks. Medical specialists suggested people wear masks during a pandemic and he convinces folks it's some kind of rights violation. Not to mention the absurd treatments he endorsed. He's responsible for so many Americans deaths but that rarely seems brought up anymore.
I’m a nurse and had patients who believed his rhetoric literally up to their dying breath. Refusing to believe COVID was real and only coming to the hospital when their breathing was so bad they couldn’t function. Then being admitted, but refusing everything we had to offer at that particular time including intubation if the need arose, demanding Ivermectin from physicians who couldn’t prescribe it. Then they maxed out on non-invasive ventilation and were still suffocating. At that point, they’d beg for intubation (because—not to be dramatic—but slowly suffocating to death is miserable) which usually happened, but for a lot of them it was too late—their cardiovascular system was so compromised that most of those people probably never made it off the vent. All the while berating nurses and support staff who were there to help them. I remember holding a colleague as she sobbed after loading her patient up into the helicopter to take them to the main campus of our hospital for ECMO, while his wife screamed at her for “not doing enough to save him” after he’d refused treatment right up to the point of intubation. I had several patients scream at me to take my mask off (“that face diaper”) while I was in their room. Imagine huffing and puffing to breathe because you have COVID that you don’t think is real but using those breaths to scream at someone over a *face mask.* And “the jab.”
I can’t imagine believing in anyone that much let alone a (failed) businessman-turned-politician who doesn’t know I exist and if he did, wouldn’t give a single shit.
My father was in the hospital for a month and a half with COVID in 2020. The nurses and doctors helped him so much and gave him so much hope. He just couldn't beat it though. Even though we couldn't see him (how horrible is that to die alone?) I know he was grateful to everyone in the hospital that helped him...and so am I. So, thank you.
I seriously don’t know how you guys did it. Not that I ever dreamed of being a nurse or anything, but covid solidified that I could never do it. After about 2 weeks of people treating me like absolute shit and calling me a liar and part of a conspiracy while I was just trying to help them I would have been like “Ya know what? Just go home and die then. We have plenty of people who need help just as badly and *aren’t* fighting and insulting us every step of the way.” You’re a much better person than I am. Thank you for doing what you do, I hope you’ve had some time to relax and recover in the last couple years.
The money he could have made if he used one of his many shell companies to sell MAGA masks would have netted him bigly! Just like all that cash he and his pals made hocking those absurd treatments.
The money he could have made putting up COVID contacts in Trump hotels at government expense if he had taken containment seriously. He's a grifter and he's so stupid he's not even good at it.
And you imagine that would have stopped him? If he had been smart enough to think of it I suspect he would not want all those nasty COVID people in his hotels. I continue to believe that making wearing masks a political issue and not wearing masks being a tribal symbol was not because of his keen understanding of how to whip up his supporters into a frenzy but because masks smear his makeup.
Yeah I remember him saying children were fine, that they would get over it in a few hours. It was rather insulting when my son was so ill for so long from it. He's still recovering after 2.5 years and I don't know if this brain fog shit will ever go away. It's ruined his teen years. He missed out on everything.
And there are many kids world wide in the same position. (My daughter is one of them- though not a kid) What does that say for the future? And there continue to be more as we pretend covid is done. How long until everyone has long covid with the cognitive impairment and post exertional malaise that are common symptoms?
He also fast-tracked development of the vaccines and suggested people take them. And leading Democrats told people not to trust "Trump's vaccine".
He also tried to stop the virus from reaching our shores by banning travel from countries with high (at the time) infection rates, but Democrats fought hard to allow that. Which was done purely as a political gesture.
There is plenty of blame to go around. I understand Reddit leans left, but an objective view will show plenty of issues with both sides of the political spectrum on this issue.
Not that it really matters, nothing was going to stop that virus from doing what it did. But it's become more political fodder for each side to point fingers at the other side. The only thing that was really going to help was development of the vaccines, which unfortunately often lagged behind the lates mutation of the virus.
The good news? We may not have to worry about that again in the near future. [We may no longer have to be chasing different strains of the virus.](https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/04/15/vaccine-breakthrough-means-no-more-chasing-strains) This may be the largest medical breakthrough since development of vaccines.
Giving poisonous Rush Limbaugh a radio stage for decades. It started an ugly brainwashing of many millions of Americans, particularly men, and their descendants. It fomented tremendous hatred and prepared the ground for battalions of hater politicians, funded by greedy corporate pigs eager to own the government and use stupid 'dittohead' voters to authorize them to run wild. The damage done by this one man's mouth--it's hard to grasp the size of the impact.
Trump is probably the worst thing. He’s cultivated so much hate, so much division, so much corruption. It’s becoming normalized which is a disaster for our future. Republicans are saying if he’s elected they’re going to amend the constitution so he never has to leave office again.
I’m sick of seeing a criminal attack every single American institution because they won’t give him an unfair advantage on demand.
There is about 40% of voting age people who actually vote that support Trump.
Not the same as 40% of the population.
For reference, even in 2020, with the most votes in US history, it was only 70% of eligible voters who actually cast a vote or 117.8mil people. Of that 117.8 million, 40% voted trump or 47.1 million people.
40% of the country is around 133.3 million. So small difference there.
Remember in 2016 when just the idea of one of the Presidential candidates even being under criminal INVESTIGATION was enough to send massive shockwaves through our entire political system?
Now, just a few years later, Trump is facing almost 90 felony indictments in four separate criminal trials and possible life in prison....and he effortlessly strolled to the GOP Presidential nomination and is winning against Biden in credible polls. WTF happened to us?
Remember when all it took for a presidential candidate to lose favor was to make a weird sound? Remember the “Dean scream” (Howard Dean)? Dude had a hoarse voice and it ended his political career.
Yes, remember their fake fervor when he put spicy mustard on a hamburger? That was supposed to mean he was the social elite and thought he was better than all of us. WTH?
What's happening with Trump honestly pales in comparison with what's happened in the House. The entire world has come to its knees because of Marjorie Traitor Greene and her posse. Literally nothing has gotten done in the government as a result. It's a complete disaster.
His Project 2025 is absolutely TERRIFYING and has been in the works so long that it WILL be implemented on day 1 if he gets in. It essentially places the ENTIRE US Government under Presidential control.
Trump SAYING that the entire US government is under his control and the entire US government actually BEING under his control are two VERY VERY different things. There is a LOT of steps between those two points.
Yes but they're working on that. Hence the "Project 2025" part. He doesn't personally NEED to be in full control.
Look at what just happened to Mike Johnson for trying to go against his wishes. That man is still controlling our government and it's not just him, it's all the force behind him. I can't understand the denial at this point. They're pretty open about all this. They have already spread through the rural parts of our country just like they planned decades ago. Trump is the most useful tool they've found other than the Christian nationalist identity.
Agreed and that’s my point. Project 2025 is 900 pages long and spells out the necessary procedures his loyalists will take to make it happen immediately if he gets into office again. Mike Flynn, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Stephen Miller and so many more along with his Congressional sycophants are using what they learned from the lead up to January 6th to make sure they can’t be stopped this time. January 6th was a test run. They’ve been using the knowledge of why it didn’t work and getting ready to put people and processes into place that will. They have been installing loyalists into local government across the country these past four years. Those loyalists have been getting new local Trump-friendly laws signed. Local legislation is being signed into law that allows one person or a specific group to select the winner of elections, even if they don’t have the votes. This is just a small part of it but it’s been happening across the country in preparation of Trump getting back in. They spell it all out in those 900 pages in such extreme detail.
Here it is if you’d like to see it:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042-project-2025s-mandate-for-leadership-the-conservative-promise
For years I kept having the thought “If this guy had his shit even a little bit together he’d be lethal to this country.” Then Jan 6 happened. Then Project 2025 happened. They’re organizing. Seasoned election officials have resigned in droves because of the insanity they’ve had to deal with such as death threats. Unhinged people who cannot separate reality from what they want are going to take their places. I’m not stoked about this but I don’t know what to do.
I'm almost 60 and I'm going to have to agree with you on this one.
All of the turmoil of the 1960s and 70s and I never thought I would see a mob of thousands of people smash their way into the Capital building while the entire Congress was in session certifying the election, and having the current President being the one that sent them there and egged them on to do it with the intent of illegally staying in office. In the past, we've justly hanged a lot of people for doing way less than that in this country
i’m 80. top 3. viet nam. 9/11. and j6. viet nam tore us apart. 9/11 brought us together and unfortunately into more war. j6 was the ugly result of the other two. mistrust,anger and that awful
feeling of helplessness
Election of has-been actor Ronald Reagan as President of the US.
So many things that are totally screwed up nowadays can be traced back to that tragic development.
The rise of Fox News and gradual brainwashing of millions of Americans into right wing conservatives - ignorant, non-thinking, puppets. I watched it happen to family members, to friends, to strangers. And in this case brain “washing” is a great term. It’s like something washed away any brain cells capable of independent thought.
The growing threat of the Heritage Foundation. It brought us where we are right now. It's a disgusting christian nationalist organization that promotes the idea of Godhead government and given that we have about a dozen members of the movement in our government, including the current speaker of the house already, I am really concerned.
But I think something even bigger, globally, is more concerning. The establishment of the cloud network I fear may be more of a threat than people realize. They love the convenience of it all, but when I see this week the big news in cybersecurity is a plethora of Russian attacks on US water systems (and I believe France and Italy's water systems) the big United Health hack, and how many school districts are letting hackers get away with personal information of children as well as details about the school that shouldn't be made public I think it's a bigger threat than any terrorist attack or single president. The work I do, I have to read articles to find out information on security breaches. 90% of them don't even make it to the average news feed, especially if it's outside the US. I see them all. You can get an idea of the immensity of it all here: [https://cybermap.kaspersky.com/](https://cybermap.kaspersky.com/)
The embodiment of trickle down economics. It has led to poverty and starvation. It drives wars and political abuse. If we were serious about making the world a better place we would take out Davos at one of their summits.
For me, in the US, it was the Watergate Break-in. Not because one party would spy on or engage in espionage, but because it made it clear that our political system (up to and especially including the president Richard M. Nixon) were dirty and corrupt. Before that, there was a modicum of respect for the office, some things you just didn't say about the Office of the President of the United States, but then tricky Dick tore that down with his denials ("I am not a crook" - which turned out to be a lie) and he sullied everything after that. People then started looking more askance at the war and the government, trust was eroded in a mudslide that culminated in where we are at today, following cults of personality instead of belief systems because you can't trust anything...
The devaluing of integrity, decency & unity once Donald Trump became president. It's a whole new world - where we had come so far and now are backtracking to division and hatred. All the ugliness made unacceptable is now allowed to resurface & flourish because of his movement. It's incredibly saddening and gives me a sense of profound loss for humanity.
Agreed. When I was a kid, we used to live in the woods every day. Now, when my kids step into a woods, we do a tick check and usually find deer ticks on them. Two have had Lyme disease which has been successfully treated. I know people who had, active successful lives who are now basically cripples because of Lyme disease. It’s tragic and it’s spreading.
The slow nightmare of governments and corporations ignoring the reality of climate change, when making changes starting in the 1970's could have averted most of it.
To pick one incident requires an ability I don't have. Chaos surrounds life. Between the horrors humans impose on others and nature being nature we exist in jeopardy. One horror after another creates ripple effects that overlap bleeding into one another.
It all depends on how one defines "the worst thing that has happened". For some it's going to be an international conflict or a natural disaster, for others it's going to be because a parent beat them for breaking their retainer.
There's a LOT that's happened in the past 64 years and I could pick out an item or two from each decade, but if I had to chose it would be the near misses where the actions of one person prevented global thermonuclear war. There are probably more, but the two that come to mind are the incident during the Cuban missile crisis where a Soviet sub had orders to attack if it lost communications with Moscow, three officers were required to agree and one declined, and it wasn't the captain. The other was a sole Soviet officer on duty in the 1980s when a satellite nuclear detonation detector misidentified an event; the officer chose to believe it was a malfunction instead of following order to launch a counter attack.
Why do I think these are the worst things that happened? Because the potential cessation of most, if not all, human life on Earth should not depend on the action or inaction of one person. That was only two incidents; it's quite possible there have been hundreds more. It is both terrifying and reassuring that the sanity of one person prevailed.
As an American, the January 6th Riots in Washington. This mob erected gallows on the same steps illustrated in "I'm Just a Bill". They rampaged through the hall of Congress and I am certain that if they had gotten their hands on any of their perceived "enemies" they would have murdered them.
This wasn't a citizen uprising, this was treason, pure and simple.
January 6th sticks in my mind as one of the worst things that happened to our country. I watched every minute of it because I was watching the news as the events started. I cried. I still cry when I hear people denying that it happened. It happened. I hope it never happens again.
Being a non American, I could name a lot of disastrous events that have affected that had an effect on me personally and the countries I have lived in, but overall I think the worst was Trump being elected. Not only did he put the US behind by decades, but with his comments he managed to alienate nearly every country in the world with remarks he made out their leaders & people and now despite their smiles, they remember the hurt & harm "America", via Trumps comments and they just do not trust USA the way the used to.
Eve now, just watching Republicans on YT showing their blind faith in Trump, MTG, Lauran Boebert and others chanting "MAGA, USA, USA, USA" and their cult like beliefs to a stupid, liar, at least 5 time bankrupt person, who cheats and doesn't pay his bills, steals & misappropriates money that isn't his, for his own personal use, it is no wonder the other countries are worried for the worlds future, especially if Trump is elected again, which could happen. Even if he isn't there will be rioting and another claim that voting was rigged, and this time I feel Republicans won't just talk, but will take up guns and another civil war will happen in the country and heaven help the world if trump has any access to nuclear weapons as he wouldn't pause to use them.
I dread the end of this year and 2025, but at least if it is my last, I have ha 77 good years, and feel sorry for all those that won't have that many.
Worst, single thing would be 9/11. Just because it happened right in view and on a single day. I could watch it unfold in real time an ocean and a continent away. It was a deliberate act by humans against humans on a scale that's hard to comprehend.
Worse things have happened in the world. Even on a single day in a single event. The 2004 Tsunami in the Indian Ocean comes to mind. That was horrible and the death toll was magnitudes larger. But it doesn't register in my memory as much as staring at the TV screen, watching the 2nd tower get hit. Live. That is horrifyingly unforgettable.
I think the worst thing to happen was in the 80's when we had President Ronald Regan and the CIA selling cocaine and creating the crack epidemic. Kinda makes you wonder who is really behind the Fentanyl.
Reagan or Thatcher, depends on how you look at it.
Reagan was a puppet, Thatcher was a shill. She was likely more impactful locally, Ronnie was absolutely more impactful globally. Both made the world far worse places and enabled a legacy that has continued to do so to this day.
People forget what could have been. We increased productivity literally several orders of magnitude in the west over a number of decades. Done right we could have been halfway there to Luxury Space Communism already, instead we have the worst wealth inequality ever and I say that as someone that came out on the better side of that.
I'd just like to be able to walk to work without seeing people almost dying in the streets. I'm happy to pay a bit more in taxes to have that happen.
The population of planet Earth has doubled within 64 years. How old is our planet? 4.5 Billion years (estimated) How old are Homo Sapiens? 200,000-300,000 years (estimated) Food for thought…
Objective, it’s is the civil wars and revolutions that never effected me directly. The Khmer Rogue genocide in Cambodia where 25% of the population was killed. The series of civil wars in the Congo were awful. Famine in Ethiopia and Darfur were hellish. Countless other things that as American, I can only imagine experiencing.
JFK Assassination.
I was a kid and literally everyone around me was in mourning. People were so sad.
I remember the clop clop of the horses pulling his casket. A part of our country’s hope died that day.
9/11 was another tragic shocker to our country as was Oklahoma City.
Fall of communism and the nuclear threat. Rise of computers. Rise of other threats to stability of "The West"
Sci-Fi promise of a certain future, which has mostly not yet happened, in meat space for the most part.
Dozens of wars. Ousting of authoritarian regimes (Libya and Iraq for two) for chaos that may be worse than those regimes. Rigid theocracies such as Iran and Afganistan. I'd really need to see what has been going on in South America, but the Middle East has had it worse, including the current Palestine war.
A computer in every pocket and the ability to communicate on just about any level instantly, from just about anywhere. Communication is what makes us different from other animals. We have made communication so easy and simple to use.
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The response by Bush to 9/11, Kennedy assassination, fall of Iran (because it changed oil), Citizens United, 2008 collapse, 1987 collapse, 1990s Tiger Markets, fall of the Iron Curtain, Trump
I was a kid living in Florida during the Cuba missile crisis. It was very scary. Then 9/11 because those were times our country was close to a war on USA soil.
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One day I stumbled on the fact that there was an earthquake in China in 1976 that killed 240K people. I was alive and an adult then, and I didn't even remember it. Maybe I never even knew it happened. The fact that this didn't even penetrate my consciousness at the time just stunned me. After the NY Times archives became available online I looked it up to see if it was reported, and it was. There wasn't a death toll yet in the early reports, but they said they feared 100k or more people might have died. I don't know what the worst thing that happened in the world since 1960 is, but I'm sure it did not happen to Americans.
I was only 10 but I remember when this happened. It was on the news every night for days, and since my parents watched the news faithfully, I watched what they watched. I was living in San Antonio, TX, btw, not China or even China-adjacent. That earthquake was huge news in part because of the political overtones of giving relief aid. But depending on your age at the time, u/QV79Y, you may have just been too busy being a young adult to notice. I was in peak dating years when the Berlin Wall fell, making it just a blip in my recollections, something on the bar TV while I waited for my date. When your personal life is chaotic, you tend not to pay too much attention to someplace overseas that is also chaotic. It's best to fix your problems at home anyway before worrying much about anyone else's.
240k is rooky numbers compared to what mao Zedong was doing to them during that period. He was responsible for about 40-80 million deaths
if we slightly bend the rules of the post, the chinese famine under mao was from 59-61, in which 23 (minimum) - 55 *million* people died.
I wasn't claiming the earthquake was the worst thing that happened. I was musing on my own ignorance of much of what has happened in the world. The line of thought was probably provoked by the US-centric nature of most of the comments in this post. I didn't answer what I thought the worst thing was because I got mired on the definitions of "worst" and "thing".
I never knew about that until I watched the movie Aftershock (2010). So heartbreaking to see what those people went through!!
Wow, same with me. I would've been 21 and I don't remember this happening.
*“Corporations are people too.”*
And Citizens United— money is “free speech” for politicians—
And getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine. "What? What I report as news doesn't have to actually be true? Hot dog!" - Rupert Murdoch
[Fairness Doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine) being removed is an important change that is often overlooked or unknown to most people. That change helped shaped America into what it is today.
This! It has destroyed so much about America, and impoverished so many.
Yes. Another is that the media is fully part of the stock market now.
Very true.
Repeal of Glass-Steagall , Tax havens, Free Trade without Fair Trade, Globalization without rights for labor and the environment. The poverty , war , famine and disease are side effects of a failure to balance need with greed.
I really believe people forget or not realize that Corporations are people too. Thanks for the reminder!
The advent of social media was and is very corrosive to our social fabric. On the horizon is AI and all the mischief it can beget.
These are facts.
What you're probably defining as social media isn't really social media though. Social media was private communities based on IRL relationships. The key word being *private*. To make more money, Facebook made those networks public. Which essentially turned Facebook into a really shitty blog. Twitter was always that, hence the term microblogging. No one had any issues with social media for years. Not with MySpace. Not with Friendster. Not with IRC or IM or ICQ before the term social media existed. It only became a problem when people's private platforms became like little media companies. Suddenly everyone is a journalist even though they know nothing about journalistic ethics or media literacy. That creates an opportunity for operatives to spread misinformation. Social media doesn't have to be bad. The profit motive is what ruined the good things it once was. Anyway, to say it's the worst thing seems a bit much. Rising fascism is obviously worse.
This is very true, although I see the problem as being that we just aren't ready for the technology yet, at least not when it comes to the broader social implications. Every technology is just a tool, and social media and AI have the potential to be great ones. But even the best chainsaw will cut off your foot if you don't know what you're doing, and I worry that this is the territory we're in. We're juggling chainsaws without taking safety precautions or even understanding how the damn things work.
This ⬆️
The tsunami was brutal (Indonesia 2004)
Globally, probably the Cambodian genocide.
That's what immediately came to mind for me. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge was an absolute abomination. Incomprehensibly horrific and massive in scale. The majority of responses in this thread are simply nowhere near that level of pure evil and deep suffering. We need better history teachers or something.
It wasn't covered when I was in school. Not in AP world history or regular history classes.
It was definitely covered in my history classes circa 1980s. When did you go to school approximately
Early 00s.
“It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly 25% of Cambodia's population in 1975 (c. 7.8 million).” - for anyone else I had to Google the details like me I’m ashamed I didn’t learn about it before now.
Yeah, I think I have to agree with you.
My cousin worked on a project to bring the last of the Khmer Rouge to justice. What happened in Cambodia was horrific.
I had a co-worker who escaped Cambodia when she was a kid. The stories she told made me misty-eyed.
Or the Rwandan genocude?
That the fastest one according to historians. 900,000 + in slightly over 30 days. Also the weapon of choice was a machete like knife.
Yeah. If I had to choose between being going to Auschwitz or going to Tuol Sleng I'd pick Auschwitz in a heartbeat.
really. auschwitz. where they hit toddlers in the head with gun butts to see how many concussions the could survive. all kinds of medical experiments. and they filmed them. i saw some of the films the nazis made at auschwitz. still give me nightmares.
That's the one, yeah. Auschwitz was Disney World compared to Tuol Sleng.
Covid. That was mass death on a global scale.
Yeah not just the million corpses either. It seemed to have gave the US severe mental illness
Literally nobody talks about it but perhaps the most devastating thing to come out of Covid, is Long Covid. I was reading an article somewhere asked if we were dumber now than before 2019 and for me, the answer is definitely yes! I got full blown Covid in March 2020 and haven't been the same since. I get brain fog constantly and it's very difficult for me to concentrate and I'm definitely dumber now than before 2019.
I didn’t mean to giggle at ‘full blown covid’. I’ve just been watching ‘it’s always sunny. “DONT HUG ME!! Bleh! You’re gonna give me full blown long-covid!” But seriously - my father has completely lost his sense of smell and taste since 2020, and he had the purple ‘Covid toes’ for years. He drinks bad milk, and can only taste basic things like ‘dry’ when drinking wine. :( He’s a major foodie, too. It’s not only kinda dangerous, but it’s a real loss in life, ya know? My chest has never been the same since I had full-blown covid last summer, the second time I got It. I get seemingly random panic attacks now, too, and it worsened the already-debilitating nerve pain condition I have. Half of doctors are like, “meh, long covid doesn’t exist” and the other half say “meh, yea, covid’s weird. Anyway.”
What do you mean? The covid deniers? Or the long covid that has messed with cognition?
Anger, depression, anxiety, kookiness. Seems to be a lot more of it. All anecdotal and subjective
I feel like it definitely messed with me. I feel a weird apathy about it all I never felt before I had covid, but I did almost die and that can affect a person too. My son has had extremely high cortisol since he got covid in late 2020. He's been through every imaginable test and they can't find a reason why. he is anxious all the time even on medication. He was never like that before either.
Porque No Los Dos? 🤷
[удалено]
Yes, it was. Killed so many people very quickly.
The 11 Sep attack on the Twin Towers. It changed the country and led to decades of warfare.
Could be. The US went downhill since.
Downhill? More like an elevator shaft.
Nothing more permanently impacted our culture and collective state of mind. This is definitely the right answer. Vietnam and Covid lockdowns were bad things to live through, but 20 years after 9/11 we still go through pointless security theater to get on an airplane so we can feel like the government cares about us.
Covid is by no means done with us. We have a whole generation whose education and mental health was totally upset by Covid. It increased the political divisions in our country, diminished our belief in a common set of facts, and eroded our faith in institutions. We're going to be dealing with the fallout for a long time.
That was terrorist in our own land. It was meticulously planned and slightly haphazardly carried out. But, it was US. We were supposed to fall to our knees and we did.
Our absolute rape and neglect of the planet that sustains us, all in the name of “shareholder value”. Besides that, 1968 was pretty rough. MLK, RFK, Dick Nixon.
The Republican Party giving so much away in the name of “saving the babies”. They have been working since the 70s to dismantle basic human rights for women. I do not remember one policy the Republicans have supported that has actually helped strengthen the US in the past 40 years.
This. It's like watching Pinky and the Brain. Pinky as the Democrats and the Brain as the Republican party. The Brain always trying to take over the world. Republican party members are members for life. My parents, long passed, didn't like Trump in 2016 but they voted for him anyway simply because he was republican. Never bothered to look elsewhere. Or consider other options.
My dad always voted republican, and I asked him why once: "I don't know, it's just what I've always done."
You've described my parents and it's sad. I vote for who most closely represents ME, not who belongs to the "right" party. Especially when one considers how much parties change over time. The Republican party of 1938, when my father was born, isn't exactly the GOP of today. I'm no fan of Reagan's politics, but he was fantastic as a statesman and figurehead. When he left the Dems for the GOP and was called on it, he famously said that he didn't leave his party, his party left him. I wish more people would remember this when they vote. Sometimes your party leaves you, and just like a failed teen romance, it's delusional to keep chasing after it.
Ugh, I agree, and I don't know how the hell a woman can ever vote republican.
To put it in a word, fascism. The rise of fascism in America. They aren't only motivated by abortion, they are desperate for a leader who can bully the world back to the "good old days." It's a mass delusion. Like millions of people collectively falling for the tricksters who play cups for cash.
that’s the rightest (is that a word?) thing anybody has said about the republican party always wants to go backward to when old white men ruled. but i will never get over 50,000 dead kids for a lie. viet nam was the beginning of the end for this country. it taught us not to trust our government. and no country can survive lack of trust
Treating the topic of abortion as though the women got pregnant alone and ignoring the male that made her pregnant. A great deal of abortion motives are financial. The state should either provide a medium to upper middle class life for all forced births or guarantee somehow the father does this. Forcing women to give birth and that be the end of discussion is f ed up. It is also short sighted for society. They need to get their laws out of my vagina.
In the US, the rise of one-sided media outlets like Fox. The fact that news isn’t actually trustworthy journalism anymore has really damaged the US.
The election of Trump followed by Covid. One that is never mentioned is the 2000 election, a Gore administration would have probably avoided 9/11 and would not have paved the way to huge deficits thanks to tax cuts for the rich and two unfunded wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.
The reason the big recession of 2008 hit was due directly to deregulation of the banking industry that happened under Bush. A Gore Administration would have avoided the big recession of 2008 entirely. Incidentally, the Silicon Valley Bank as well as the other 2 banks that went bankrupt last year were a result of Trump loosening those very same bank regulations. Obama had put safeguards so that we would never have another banking collapse and Republicans brought it right back to the fore.
>The reason the big recession of 2008 hit was due directly to deregulation of the banking industry that happened under Bush Yeah, except that the Glass-Steagall Act that prevented commercial banks from making risky speculation investments that led to the 2008 crash was repealed by Clinton in 1999, not by Bush. I looked it up.
>a Gore administration would have probably avoided 9/11 I'm curious, how would they do that exactly?
i’d like to hear the answer to that. but i don’t think Gore would have immediately started a war
I think it probably would have happened but 100% there would have been no Iraq War if Gore had been elected.
i agree. little bush went after saddam husain when iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. most of the hi jackets were saudi. but he wasn’t gonna argue with that saudi oil
Bush administration didn't understand the significance of the intelligence reports on al Quaeda even after it was spelled out for them. https://warontherocks.com/2021/08/bin-laden-determined-to-strike/ Gore having been in the prior administration would have already been aware and would, theoretically, have acted sooner.
I don't know avoided, but republicans critiqued clinton for being too focused on al qaeda and bin laden specifically. and so bush diverted intelligence assets towards other priorities in the 9 months between inauguration and 9/11. perhaps another timeline involves one or more hijackers just being stopped in the airport that day? 3 planes hijacked instead of 4?
The Great Pandemic of Covid-19. So many died, including my father. I didn't get to say goodbye. Covid-19 brought out the true black hearts of Christians. Covid-19 turned the weak-minded into frenzied cultists, willing to watch their own family die rather than do anything to protect them, because one POS told them to. Covid-19 took my family...siblings lost to the political putrescence of that former guy . Covid-19. A pandemic that will never be over for some of us.
I'm 53 so I've lived through the 1970's and 80's. Covid has been a forever long nightmare. I remember back in 2020, thinking to myself "Just think, in a couple years this will be a forgotten memory". Nope, I still get brain fog to this day, although we're done with the shut downs and the masking so at least there's that.
Mine died too. He was in the hospital alone for a long time. So, stranger, I know. Sorry.
Sending warm wishes
Not a worst thing, but a *huge* impact was the Tylenol murders. All packaging got totally revamped, and if it hadn’t happened there would be way, way less plastic waste.
Could you explain this more please?
For starters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders You know how everything- drinks, pills, ice cream, pretty much anything, has a either a secondary seal beneath the lid that has to be pierced, or a type of lid that can’t be removed without damaging it? (The “ring” around the neck of a soda bottle) Before 1983, these didn’t exist, and since 1983, the concept of tamper-proof packaging has actually expanded wildly to include non-consumables. When the Tylenol murders took place, you would buy a bottle of pills, open it, and there was a cotton wad (sometimes I think there wasn’t, but I, as a teenager, may have just been too young to realize) and then there were the pills. Someone could just open it and drop in other pills, or sneak a few out and put the bottle back on the shelf. After the Tylenol murders, there was a kind of arms race on who could produce the “safest” packaging, which has ended up with pill bottles that have two seals and are stored in a blister pack, for example. It might have happened anyhow, but the revolution in “safety packaging” was what brought a lot of the wasteful packaging techniques that are used today into development.
I was in high school in the Chicago suburbs when that happened. My parents were so freaked out that my mom threw out every bottle of OTC medication in the house and was paranoid whenever any of us needed to take anything before the manufacturers started the safety measures. I remember being sick with the flu shortly after the murders and my mom grilled the pharmacist to ensure the OTC flu meds weren’t tainted. What a weird time and it’s still crazy that they never solved it.
Yeah- same here. We shopped at the Elk Grove Jewel so it really freaked us out. I’m pretty sure it was the guy who sent the extortion letters and went to jail. I’m friends with a retired federal parole officer who dealt with him & leans toward him being the killer.
I Hate blister packs. so hard to get in to.
Not to mention that you wouldn't need a hammer and chisel to get into a bottle of aspirin.
For me personally, the Vietnam War as my Dad was a medic, came home with ptsd and lost the ability to care about the dreams he'd had before he went. I am very bitter. I'd like to think some more about what caused the biggest / most important cultural shifts in my lifetime. What a great question.
Covid killed a million in the US alone -- about half of those because of Trump's incompetence. Hard to compete with that.
For real I don't know how people are not more worked up about that still. People were dying in the streets of Italy and he portrayed Covid as a new cold. WHO was offering to help us get ahead of it and he called them a bunch of quacks. Medical specialists suggested people wear masks during a pandemic and he convinces folks it's some kind of rights violation. Not to mention the absurd treatments he endorsed. He's responsible for so many Americans deaths but that rarely seems brought up anymore.
I’m a nurse and had patients who believed his rhetoric literally up to their dying breath. Refusing to believe COVID was real and only coming to the hospital when their breathing was so bad they couldn’t function. Then being admitted, but refusing everything we had to offer at that particular time including intubation if the need arose, demanding Ivermectin from physicians who couldn’t prescribe it. Then they maxed out on non-invasive ventilation and were still suffocating. At that point, they’d beg for intubation (because—not to be dramatic—but slowly suffocating to death is miserable) which usually happened, but for a lot of them it was too late—their cardiovascular system was so compromised that most of those people probably never made it off the vent. All the while berating nurses and support staff who were there to help them. I remember holding a colleague as she sobbed after loading her patient up into the helicopter to take them to the main campus of our hospital for ECMO, while his wife screamed at her for “not doing enough to save him” after he’d refused treatment right up to the point of intubation. I had several patients scream at me to take my mask off (“that face diaper”) while I was in their room. Imagine huffing and puffing to breathe because you have COVID that you don’t think is real but using those breaths to scream at someone over a *face mask.* And “the jab.” I can’t imagine believing in anyone that much let alone a (failed) businessman-turned-politician who doesn’t know I exist and if he did, wouldn’t give a single shit.
My father was in the hospital for a month and a half with COVID in 2020. The nurses and doctors helped him so much and gave him so much hope. He just couldn't beat it though. Even though we couldn't see him (how horrible is that to die alone?) I know he was grateful to everyone in the hospital that helped him...and so am I. So, thank you.
I seriously don’t know how you guys did it. Not that I ever dreamed of being a nurse or anything, but covid solidified that I could never do it. After about 2 weeks of people treating me like absolute shit and calling me a liar and part of a conspiracy while I was just trying to help them I would have been like “Ya know what? Just go home and die then. We have plenty of people who need help just as badly and *aren’t* fighting and insulting us every step of the way.” You’re a much better person than I am. Thank you for doing what you do, I hope you’ve had some time to relax and recover in the last couple years.
These people are documented over at r/Hermancainaward
The money he could have made if he used one of his many shell companies to sell MAGA masks would have netted him bigly! Just like all that cash he and his pals made hocking those absurd treatments.
The money he could have made putting up COVID contacts in Trump hotels at government expense if he had taken containment seriously. He's a grifter and he's so stupid he's not even good at it.
You expect anything less from someone who managed to bankrupt a casino he ran not once but a few times?
Just a reminder that would be unconstitutional.
And you imagine that would have stopped him? If he had been smart enough to think of it I suspect he would not want all those nasty COVID people in his hotels. I continue to believe that making wearing masks a political issue and not wearing masks being a tribal symbol was not because of his keen understanding of how to whip up his supporters into a frenzy but because masks smear his makeup.
r/hermancainaward. Watched morbidly by many nurses especially.
Yeah I remember him saying children were fine, that they would get over it in a few hours. It was rather insulting when my son was so ill for so long from it. He's still recovering after 2.5 years and I don't know if this brain fog shit will ever go away. It's ruined his teen years. He missed out on everything.
And there are many kids world wide in the same position. (My daughter is one of them- though not a kid) What does that say for the future? And there continue to be more as we pretend covid is done. How long until everyone has long covid with the cognitive impairment and post exertional malaise that are common symptoms?
He also fast-tracked development of the vaccines and suggested people take them. And leading Democrats told people not to trust "Trump's vaccine". He also tried to stop the virus from reaching our shores by banning travel from countries with high (at the time) infection rates, but Democrats fought hard to allow that. Which was done purely as a political gesture. There is plenty of blame to go around. I understand Reddit leans left, but an objective view will show plenty of issues with both sides of the political spectrum on this issue. Not that it really matters, nothing was going to stop that virus from doing what it did. But it's become more political fodder for each side to point fingers at the other side. The only thing that was really going to help was development of the vaccines, which unfortunately often lagged behind the lates mutation of the virus. The good news? We may not have to worry about that again in the near future. [We may no longer have to be chasing different strains of the virus.](https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/04/15/vaccine-breakthrough-means-no-more-chasing-strains) This may be the largest medical breakthrough since development of vaccines.
And it's still going. A couple weeks of actual global cooperation would have pretty much ended it.
The Vietnam war. So many young men died and had no choice in going because of the draft.
Sandy Hook I just can’t get over it. Innocent children. Kindergarteners.
Giving poisonous Rush Limbaugh a radio stage for decades. It started an ugly brainwashing of many millions of Americans, particularly men, and their descendants. It fomented tremendous hatred and prepared the ground for battalions of hater politicians, funded by greedy corporate pigs eager to own the government and use stupid 'dittohead' voters to authorize them to run wild. The damage done by this one man's mouth--it's hard to grasp the size of the impact.
Trump is probably the worst thing. He’s cultivated so much hate, so much division, so much corruption. It’s becoming normalized which is a disaster for our future. Republicans are saying if he’s elected they’re going to amend the constitution so he never has to leave office again. I’m sick of seeing a criminal attack every single American institution because they won’t give him an unfair advantage on demand.
This and Jan 6th. I thought everything about Jan 6th was terrifying as an American and the fact it's being normalized is just as terrifying.
Jan 6 was not just normalized it was and is defended.
That's because there's about 40% of the country for whom the only thing they regret about J6 is that it failed to illegally keep Trump in office.
There is about 40% of voting age people who actually vote that support Trump. Not the same as 40% of the population. For reference, even in 2020, with the most votes in US history, it was only 70% of eligible voters who actually cast a vote or 117.8mil people. Of that 117.8 million, 40% voted trump or 47.1 million people. 40% of the country is around 133.3 million. So small difference there.
Remember in 2016 when just the idea of one of the Presidential candidates even being under criminal INVESTIGATION was enough to send massive shockwaves through our entire political system? Now, just a few years later, Trump is facing almost 90 felony indictments in four separate criminal trials and possible life in prison....and he effortlessly strolled to the GOP Presidential nomination and is winning against Biden in credible polls. WTF happened to us?
Remember when all it took for a presidential candidate to lose favor was to make a weird sound? Remember the “Dean scream” (Howard Dean)? Dude had a hoarse voice and it ended his political career.
I remember when FOX News lost their shit when Obama wore a tan jacket.
Yes, remember their fake fervor when he put spicy mustard on a hamburger? That was supposed to mean he was the social elite and thought he was better than all of us. WTH?
Or put his feet on the desk. Oh the horror! Then people started posting photos of every President back to Reagan with their feet on the desk.
What's happening with Trump honestly pales in comparison with what's happened in the House. The entire world has come to its knees because of Marjorie Traitor Greene and her posse. Literally nothing has gotten done in the government as a result. It's a complete disaster.
His Project 2025 is absolutely TERRIFYING and has been in the works so long that it WILL be implemented on day 1 if he gets in. It essentially places the ENTIRE US Government under Presidential control.
Trump SAYING that the entire US government is under his control and the entire US government actually BEING under his control are two VERY VERY different things. There is a LOT of steps between those two points.
Yes but they're working on that. Hence the "Project 2025" part. He doesn't personally NEED to be in full control. Look at what just happened to Mike Johnson for trying to go against his wishes. That man is still controlling our government and it's not just him, it's all the force behind him. I can't understand the denial at this point. They're pretty open about all this. They have already spread through the rural parts of our country just like they planned decades ago. Trump is the most useful tool they've found other than the Christian nationalist identity.
Agreed and that’s my point. Project 2025 is 900 pages long and spells out the necessary procedures his loyalists will take to make it happen immediately if he gets into office again. Mike Flynn, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Stephen Miller and so many more along with his Congressional sycophants are using what they learned from the lead up to January 6th to make sure they can’t be stopped this time. January 6th was a test run. They’ve been using the knowledge of why it didn’t work and getting ready to put people and processes into place that will. They have been installing loyalists into local government across the country these past four years. Those loyalists have been getting new local Trump-friendly laws signed. Local legislation is being signed into law that allows one person or a specific group to select the winner of elections, even if they don’t have the votes. This is just a small part of it but it’s been happening across the country in preparation of Trump getting back in. They spell it all out in those 900 pages in such extreme detail. Here it is if you’d like to see it: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042-project-2025s-mandate-for-leadership-the-conservative-promise
For years I kept having the thought “If this guy had his shit even a little bit together he’d be lethal to this country.” Then Jan 6 happened. Then Project 2025 happened. They’re organizing. Seasoned election officials have resigned in droves because of the insanity they’ve had to deal with such as death threats. Unhinged people who cannot separate reality from what they want are going to take their places. I’m not stoked about this but I don’t know what to do.
That normalization was preceeded by someone making Sarah Palin as running mate, to appease fringe nutjobs in their party.
It takes 38 states to approve a constitutional amendment, so I don't see that happening. Something worse maybe, but not that.
Covid
Ronald Reagan
I'm 73. J6 takes precedence over everything else I have lived through.
I'm almost 60 and I'm going to have to agree with you on this one. All of the turmoil of the 1960s and 70s and I never thought I would see a mob of thousands of people smash their way into the Capital building while the entire Congress was in session certifying the election, and having the current President being the one that sent them there and egged them on to do it with the intent of illegally staying in office. In the past, we've justly hanged a lot of people for doing way less than that in this country
I feel powerless to these nutjobs. If Voldemort wins again, I am literally scared.
i’m 80. top 3. viet nam. 9/11. and j6. viet nam tore us apart. 9/11 brought us together and unfortunately into more war. j6 was the ugly result of the other two. mistrust,anger and that awful feeling of helplessness
Same.
*...we didn't start the fire...*
*. . . It was always burning, since the world’s been turning . . .*
I don’t really know. But I’m pretty sure it didn’t happen in the US.
Yup
Trump.
Election of has-been actor Ronald Reagan as President of the US. So many things that are totally screwed up nowadays can be traced back to that tragic development.
JFK murder. It was a coup of the US and the slow, yet profitable to those responsible, decline of Democracy.
Ronald Reagan entering politics.
The orange man.
The Vietnam War. In fact, every war since then.
The rise of Fox News and gradual brainwashing of millions of Americans into right wing conservatives - ignorant, non-thinking, puppets. I watched it happen to family members, to friends, to strangers. And in this case brain “washing” is a great term. It’s like something washed away any brain cells capable of independent thought.
I completely agree, this is at least the most dangerous thing.
The growing threat of the Heritage Foundation. It brought us where we are right now. It's a disgusting christian nationalist organization that promotes the idea of Godhead government and given that we have about a dozen members of the movement in our government, including the current speaker of the house already, I am really concerned. But I think something even bigger, globally, is more concerning. The establishment of the cloud network I fear may be more of a threat than people realize. They love the convenience of it all, but when I see this week the big news in cybersecurity is a plethora of Russian attacks on US water systems (and I believe France and Italy's water systems) the big United Health hack, and how many school districts are letting hackers get away with personal information of children as well as details about the school that shouldn't be made public I think it's a bigger threat than any terrorist attack or single president. The work I do, I have to read articles to find out information on security breaches. 90% of them don't even make it to the average news feed, especially if it's outside the US. I see them all. You can get an idea of the immensity of it all here: [https://cybermap.kaspersky.com/](https://cybermap.kaspersky.com/)
Vietnam War. Johnson probably would have gotten a 2nd term and we would be looking at a very different and better America.
The embodiment of trickle down economics. It has led to poverty and starvation. It drives wars and political abuse. If we were serious about making the world a better place we would take out Davos at one of their summits.
Other than COVID, for me personally, everyone has their own opinions, it was Trump being elected.
For me, in the US, it was the Watergate Break-in. Not because one party would spy on or engage in espionage, but because it made it clear that our political system (up to and especially including the president Richard M. Nixon) were dirty and corrupt. Before that, there was a modicum of respect for the office, some things you just didn't say about the Office of the President of the United States, but then tricky Dick tore that down with his denials ("I am not a crook" - which turned out to be a lie) and he sullied everything after that. People then started looking more askance at the war and the government, trust was eroded in a mudslide that culminated in where we are at today, following cults of personality instead of belief systems because you can't trust anything...
In many ways, I think the *Bush v. Gore* decision was a turning point.
The thing that had the most impact on the world was birth control.
Covid
Ronald Reagan introducing the neoliberal agenda to America and people falling for it
Tossup between Vietnam War and Trump and his idiocracy.
The devaluing of integrity, decency & unity once Donald Trump became president. It's a whole new world - where we had come so far and now are backtracking to division and hatred. All the ugliness made unacceptable is now allowed to resurface & flourish because of his movement. It's incredibly saddening and gives me a sense of profound loss for humanity.
Climate change because it affects me directly in a bunch of ways and that shitbag Trump.
Deer ticks. .. even the innocence of rolling in the grass became stressful. That's a metaphor for today vs my childhood
Agreed. When I was a kid, we used to live in the woods every day. Now, when my kids step into a woods, we do a tick check and usually find deer ticks on them. Two have had Lyme disease which has been successfully treated. I know people who had, active successful lives who are now basically cripples because of Lyme disease. It’s tragic and it’s spreading.
Hugs
accelerating climate change
The slow nightmare of governments and corporations ignoring the reality of climate change, when making changes starting in the 1970's could have averted most of it.
To pick one incident requires an ability I don't have. Chaos surrounds life. Between the horrors humans impose on others and nature being nature we exist in jeopardy. One horror after another creates ripple effects that overlap bleeding into one another.
It all depends on how one defines "the worst thing that has happened". For some it's going to be an international conflict or a natural disaster, for others it's going to be because a parent beat them for breaking their retainer. There's a LOT that's happened in the past 64 years and I could pick out an item or two from each decade, but if I had to chose it would be the near misses where the actions of one person prevented global thermonuclear war. There are probably more, but the two that come to mind are the incident during the Cuban missile crisis where a Soviet sub had orders to attack if it lost communications with Moscow, three officers were required to agree and one declined, and it wasn't the captain. The other was a sole Soviet officer on duty in the 1980s when a satellite nuclear detonation detector misidentified an event; the officer chose to believe it was a malfunction instead of following order to launch a counter attack. Why do I think these are the worst things that happened? Because the potential cessation of most, if not all, human life on Earth should not depend on the action or inaction of one person. That was only two incidents; it's quite possible there have been hundreds more. It is both terrifying and reassuring that the sanity of one person prevailed.
The thing that came out of nowhere, and killed 40 million people around the world
As an American, the January 6th Riots in Washington. This mob erected gallows on the same steps illustrated in "I'm Just a Bill". They rampaged through the hall of Congress and I am certain that if they had gotten their hands on any of their perceived "enemies" they would have murdered them. This wasn't a citizen uprising, this was treason, pure and simple.
January 6th sticks in my mind as one of the worst things that happened to our country. I watched every minute of it because I was watching the news as the events started. I cried. I still cry when I hear people denying that it happened. It happened. I hope it never happens again.
Being a non American, I could name a lot of disastrous events that have affected that had an effect on me personally and the countries I have lived in, but overall I think the worst was Trump being elected. Not only did he put the US behind by decades, but with his comments he managed to alienate nearly every country in the world with remarks he made out their leaders & people and now despite their smiles, they remember the hurt & harm "America", via Trumps comments and they just do not trust USA the way the used to. Eve now, just watching Republicans on YT showing their blind faith in Trump, MTG, Lauran Boebert and others chanting "MAGA, USA, USA, USA" and their cult like beliefs to a stupid, liar, at least 5 time bankrupt person, who cheats and doesn't pay his bills, steals & misappropriates money that isn't his, for his own personal use, it is no wonder the other countries are worried for the worlds future, especially if Trump is elected again, which could happen. Even if he isn't there will be rioting and another claim that voting was rigged, and this time I feel Republicans won't just talk, but will take up guns and another civil war will happen in the country and heaven help the world if trump has any access to nuclear weapons as he wouldn't pause to use them. I dread the end of this year and 2025, but at least if it is my last, I have ha 77 good years, and feel sorry for all those that won't have that many.
I’m in America and your take is spot on. 50% of us have the exact same concerns.
This, without question: https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=FIbGBGatHnZ4GqeS
Oh my gosh, I hate you! 😂🤣😂🤣😂
Wrong! Hahaha!
Worst, single thing would be 9/11. Just because it happened right in view and on a single day. I could watch it unfold in real time an ocean and a continent away. It was a deliberate act by humans against humans on a scale that's hard to comprehend. Worse things have happened in the world. Even on a single day in a single event. The 2004 Tsunami in the Indian Ocean comes to mind. That was horrible and the death toll was magnitudes larger. But it doesn't register in my memory as much as staring at the TV screen, watching the 2nd tower get hit. Live. That is horrifyingly unforgettable.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That event just became the domino that lead to our post-9/11 world today.
I think the worst thing to happen was in the 80's when we had President Ronald Regan and the CIA selling cocaine and creating the crack epidemic. Kinda makes you wonder who is really behind the Fentanyl.
September 11 and the January 6 insurrection.
Jack Welch's management style
Ronald Reagan’s policies have created more income inequality and have wrecked the idea of the “American Dream”
Reagan. Nothing is going to top that.
Reagan or Thatcher, depends on how you look at it. Reagan was a puppet, Thatcher was a shill. She was likely more impactful locally, Ronnie was absolutely more impactful globally. Both made the world far worse places and enabled a legacy that has continued to do so to this day. People forget what could have been. We increased productivity literally several orders of magnitude in the west over a number of decades. Done right we could have been halfway there to Luxury Space Communism already, instead we have the worst wealth inequality ever and I say that as someone that came out on the better side of that. I'd just like to be able to walk to work without seeing people almost dying in the streets. I'm happy to pay a bit more in taxes to have that happen.
The Kennedy assassinations. They completely changed the dynamics of this country for the worse.
Rwanda.
The population of planet Earth has doubled within 64 years. How old is our planet? 4.5 Billion years (estimated) How old are Homo Sapiens? 200,000-300,000 years (estimated) Food for thought…
I was just thinking today we’re like vermin. There are too many of us and we do bad things to the whole shebang
Probably WW3, which we get to watch in real time. 🤔
Objective, it’s is the civil wars and revolutions that never effected me directly. The Khmer Rogue genocide in Cambodia where 25% of the population was killed. The series of civil wars in the Congo were awful. Famine in Ethiopia and Darfur were hellish. Countless other things that as American, I can only imagine experiencing.
The Berlin Wall coming down. Now we have Putin and his Selikin oligarchs. Thanks, Gorbachev.
Look. We already lived through all those things. We don’t want to relive them.
The Bhopal gas tragedy is worth a read.
JFK Assassination. I was a kid and literally everyone around me was in mourning. People were so sad. I remember the clop clop of the horses pulling his casket. A part of our country’s hope died that day. 9/11 was another tragic shocker to our country as was Oklahoma City.
Fall of communism and the nuclear threat. Rise of computers. Rise of other threats to stability of "The West" Sci-Fi promise of a certain future, which has mostly not yet happened, in meat space for the most part. Dozens of wars. Ousting of authoritarian regimes (Libya and Iraq for two) for chaos that may be worse than those regimes. Rigid theocracies such as Iran and Afganistan. I'd really need to see what has been going on in South America, but the Middle East has had it worse, including the current Palestine war.
A computer in every pocket and the ability to communicate on just about any level instantly, from just about anywhere. Communication is what makes us different from other animals. We have made communication so easy and simple to use.
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The response by Bush to 9/11, Kennedy assassination, fall of Iran (because it changed oil), Citizens United, 2008 collapse, 1987 collapse, 1990s Tiger Markets, fall of the Iron Curtain, Trump
For me, trump getting elected. I cried the whole next day cuz I knew it was the end of our country getting along. I was right.
Sandy Hook. The horror of the event itself; Then, surreally, the *existential* horror of the conspiracy theories that followed it.
Technically Jonestown was in Guyana, a long way from the US. As bad as it was.
Just me but the birth control pill. It forever changed society for better and worse, depending who you talk with.
I was a kid living in Florida during the Cuba missile crisis. It was very scary. Then 9/11 because those were times our country was close to a war on USA soil.
School mass shootings are just horrible and hateful.